FC Dallas to hire Schellas Hyndman?

According to Carrick, Hunt Sports Group, owners of FC Dallas, is set to hire Hyndman, who the club had considered a favorite for the position back when it hired Steve Morrow as head coach following the 2006 season.

What’s my take? I think the idea of handing those two jobs to a coach with no professional coaching experience is shockingly misguided. Also, for all of Hyndman’s success on the college level there are question marks, such as the fact that despite being the only Division I program in talent-rich Texas, SMU has never played for, let alone won, an NCAA Championship.

There are two coaches who have succeeded in making the direct transition from college head coach to MLS head coach are Bruce Arena (with D.C. United) and Sigi Schmid (with the Los Angeles Galaxy). While these two coaches certainly make an argument for Hyndman possibly doing well in MLS, it should be noted that these successes took play eight years ago. Also, both Arena and Schmid actually won national championships on the college level

Throw in the fact that FC Dallas is ready to give Hyndman the title of technical director as well and this appointment could be a disaster.

What do you think of Hyndman being FC Dallas head coach? Share your thoughts below.

12 Responses to FC Dallas to hire Schellas Hyndman?

I’m not sure it’s time to declare him a risky hire b/c he never won a nat’l championship, but I definitely am not in favor of hiring anyone as both a coach and tech director. I think that’s a huge mistake and it’ll make him both a lesser coach and a lesser TD.

Seems to me something is rotten in Frisco. The Hunt’s and the GM conducting separate job searches? What the heck is going on? Also, I can see giving a coaching position to a guy with no MLS background, but giving him the Technical Director position as well? Yikes.

This really validates the Steve Davis comments on his Morrow article about the organization being messed up.

1. Two different coach searches (HSG and Hitchcock), now that’s screwy and doesn’t speak well to the club.

2. Hitchcock is on a short leash to sell tickets–so that explains the firing of Morrow (ie: nothing to do with “lost the club house” or whatever–Hitchcock needs wins right now to try and sell every ticket he can).

3. Both jobs to one guy. I think that’s pretty much a dumb idea. Now if someone was a great candidate and knew MLS, I might let him pick the TD and his assistants. But you have separate positions because it’s a lot of work.

4. I think college record is deceptive and doesn’t tell us a lot. You can recruit well and that play overmatched schools piling up a lot of W’s. There are some good college coaches and then there are some good recruiters. I haven’t seen enough of his teams against sides of equal ability to judge how much his success is due to talent (via recruitment) vs. talent (via development) vs. tactics (ie: game prep and coaching).

5. The implied idea that he may still want to run his clinics/camps indicates he may be especially the wrong choice. As the standard of play improves every so modestly in MLS, the need to have a coach who is a fulltime coach, scouts opponents, watches film, reviews potential player acquisitions becomes more critical.

As to Hyndeman not winning an NCAA title, you gotta remember, SMU is a private school, and soccer can’t give full rides to most of its players, so it’s going to be a challenge to get kids to accept partial scholarships. Only 3 private schools have made the Final in the last 12 years or so, Wake, Creighton, and Stanford. (Stanford being a really good school helps.)

On one hand, it’s a telling criticism that Hyndman hasn’t won an NCAA title despite being the only power in Texas. On the other hand, only commies play soccer in Texas, so kudos to him for building a power in a state where people would rather play football. If I’m Hyndman, I’m running in the opposite direction from FCD, because this is clearly a franchise that has organization issues–he won’t be given adequate time to install his system b/c he’ll ALWAYS be looking over his shoulder. (Somewhat) questionable hire, but undoubtedly bad situation for Hyndman to be walking into.

Josh–when I moved to Dallas from Maryland last year I thought the same thing about Texas, but the youth programs here are pretty amazing. Maybe I’m just paying more attention to this kind of stuff now, but I don’t remember anything in MD or CO (my last 2 homes) that could touch Northern Texas.

As for the coach? I’m not sure why create a TD and then give the title to the coach. I’m hoping Hyndman holds both jobs for the rest of this year, then hires a coach for next. Regardless, FCD’s actions the last 3 weeks have been very discouraging.

I’m not surprised to see such a move happen by the worst club in the history of soccer, not just MLS. We never seen anything special, good happen out of this club. It’s just a heart-breaking thing to know they already have a soccer-specific-stadium, which makes it hard for MLS to relocate the team. They’re so terrible and this move adds more crap to their big list of craps.